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Sunday Reflex 9-12-10

Wow. What an incredible weekend. There's almost no way I can share all that happened this weekend and all that pumps me up about it, but I'll try!

• One of the best Children's Ministry Training events I've ever seen on Saturday. Way to go, Mitch, Jenny, Doug, and the entire Children's ministry team!  
• Trained a whole new group of  new Life_Groups who will start new groups this week!
• We now have almost 400 new adults signed up for Group Launch this Wed night! WOW!
• Todd Nichols has now introduced yet a another great song he's written, entitled: "Send Revival, Lord" to the MLC crowd. GREAT STUFF AGAIN, bro!
• Kicked off our new series: "Parental Advisory."
• We rocked the house with "Life is a Highway" and THEN...
• I drove a black Mustang GT on to the stage!

• "This symbolizes one of the greatest fears we have as parents: The day we turn over the keys to the car to our kids."
• "Whether we realize it or not, we're all getting ready to turn over the keys, and I don't mean the keys to the car but the keys to this highway called life!"
• "I don't care what kind of training we're doing with our kids, it requires repetition. Training requires consistency."
• "Even when our kids are inconsistent, we've got to be consistent in our reactions."
• "Our kids are going to veer off the road. We just can't go with them!"
• "We've also got to be consistent on our example. If we want our kids to be sexually pure, then we've gt to be sexually pure. If we want them to have a great marriage, we've got to start building a great one!"
• "Consistency builds credibility and reliability."
• "God is our Heavenly Father, and not only has He set the example to us. He had offered Himself to us! He wants to live in and through us and help build consistency in our lives as parents."
• Newcomer's Lunch after the services: with over 100 people there! 
• EVOLVE Middle & High School last night at MLC. GREAT NIGHT! Pics below say it all!

 

• Last but surely not least, we launched a NEW CHURCH yesterday in Hall County called Revolution Church! Congrats to Shad Treadaway and all the Revolution Team on a successful launch! 
• God is rocking our church and is  using our church to rock our community, nation, and world! To HIM be the glory!

Gr8.8 Prayer Guide...

Prayer Guide

We devote this week to drawing closer to God & His mission in
the world. We invite you to join us this week as we pray, worship, serve, invite, unite, grow, merge, & impact our community between now and 8.8!

Monday. Pray for yourself. Many of us feel tired and thirsty.Jesus said that He is the giver of Living Water. John 4:14, “But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again—ever! Pour out your heart to Jesus and ask Him to satisfy the longings in your soul.

Tuesday. Reflect on where you are in your spiritual journey...
How are you doing in spending time with Jesus? How are you serving others? Are you experiencing community? Are you investing in the lives of disconnected people?

Wednesday. Please pray that the parents and students in schools throughout our community will see God’s love as we serve them this week.

Thursday. Spend time praying for God to restore any fractured marriages & families in Forsyth and Dawson counties.

Friday. Pray that single adults throughout our county would sense God’s presence and provision in their lives this weekend.

Saturday. Pray that we will love & serve all the new people visiting our church tomorrow. Pray that God would heal their fractured fairy tales and they would find MLC to be a place where they can belong and become!

Sunday. Ask God to show up in Gr8 power in our church, and then through our church today!

8 days that could change history...

Starting yesterday, we began to pray as a church around one unified idea: that God would show up in Gr8 power in our lives, families, church, and community between now and 8.8.10, this next Sunday! We'll be praying, fasting, worshiping, serving, inviting, uniting, and impacting our community!

Some event highlights:

• Haiti trip Information Mtg, Monday nite: 6:45
• We'll be serving as as Guest Services Volunteers several Middle Schools and Elementary Schools for their OPEN HOUSES on Wednesday and Thursday of this week!
• We'll be prayer walking around several more schools!
• MERGE Wednesday, 6:45. We won't eat together this time, because many of us will be fasting (we'll have pizza for the kids).  We will worship, communion, and then I have some BIG STUFF to share from my heart that I believe God will use to shape your heart and our church!  

Is Jesus coming back today?!

"So you, too, must keep watch! For you don't know what day your Lord is coming." -Jesus, Matthew 24:42

What if we REALLY believed Jesus could come back today? 

How would it change our schedule?

How would it change the way we work?

WOULD we work?

Would we do ministry the same way today?

How would it change the nature of our relationships?

Would the desire to share our faith intensify? 

A lot would probably change if we thoughts Jesus was coming back today. So here's my question: WHAT IF HE IS?! HE COULD! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING ON?

Start living today as if Jesus was coming back and it will not only alter the course of your day. It will alter the course of your life! 

 

Sunday Reflex 7-11-10...

Another great day at Mountain Lake yesterday! Here's why:

• Did you know that  the song we sang: "Worship will Rise" was written by our Worship Pastor Todd Nichols? GREAT SONG, TODD!

• We closed out our ALIENS msg series.

• Btm line: "When we become Christians, we don't just become aliens, we become part of an alien family."

• "Because God views us differently, we ought to views each other differently. If HE is our Father, then what does that make you and me? Brothers and Sisters!"

• "You've heard that blood is thicker than water?As Christians we are bonded together through the blood of Jesus Christ! That's a POWERFUL common bond!"

• Unveiled for the first time our initial plans for our new paradigm of small groups being rolled out this Fall: "Life Groups. Doing Life. Bringing Life."

• I REALLY shared my heart with the Mountain Lake family about our heart for our church and our church family. If you're a Mountain Laker, I PRAY you'll watch the msg online HERE later in Monday.

• "Our understanding of the church as a family should be reflected through the way we prioritize each other, send time with each other, and stick by each other, even we disagree or have conflict!"

• The band came and performed a song called: "This is Home" by Switchfoot, and I asked for a commitment from every person in the room. The chorus says this: "This is Home; Now I'm finally where I belong; Yeah, this is home; I've been searching for a place of my own; Now I've found it,Yeah this is home."

• "A key represents the fact that THIS HOME is where I belong.When I take the key to a new home, it is a great day; but it is also a scary day, because I realize that I have to pay for this home! Keep it up! Maintain it! Protect and Defend it! And love the people in it!"
  

• We had keys strewn across the stage and I asked everyone to come take one expressing their commitment to embrace this as their home whether, they were:
• • coming home to God for the first time, with Jesus as the key
  • making a commitment to call Mountain Lake home for the first time
  • getting plugged into our family through service and giving
  • come BACK off the sidelines
  • express their desire to stick by our family through thick and thin!

• Announce our upcoming series starting this next Sunday called: "OMG!!!" We are encouraging everyone to bring their cellphones to church this Sunday. Just get here and you'll know why!

• Another great day @mtnlakechurch.

Resolving Conflict...

The church is described in the Bible as a family. Other Christians are our our brothers and sisters, and together we make up the family of God. Question for you: Does your family ever have conflict? Do you think it would be possible that a family made up of HUNDREDS of people would ever have conflict? In fact, I will promise you this: If you hang around church and Christians long enough, someone is going to hurt your feelings; someone's going to make you angry; you're going to disagree with someone about something; you're going to have conflict! Welcome to the family! 

God never promised that as Christians, we would never have conflict. He DID say, however, that the way we DEAL WITH, and RESOLVE conflict, should be different from the way everyone else does it! So here's the #1 distinct, different way Christians should deal with conflict, versus how everyone else deals with it:

• Instead of avoiding it,  deal with it head on. 

Everyone HATES conflict, and avoids it at all costs. However, as Christ followers, Jesus taught that not only are we NOT to avoid it, we are to meet conflict head on, brother to brother and sister to sister. “If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back.” - Jesus, in Matthew 18:15 (NLT).

So what does this mean?

• "Venting" is not Biblical. We're not supposed to talk about our "struggle" to anyone else. We are supposed to go talk to the person who offended us. Talking to ANYONE else about it before we have talked to that person is SIN, and we need to repent of it. Venting our anger, struggles, and questions to anyone else, only further spreads and perpetuates the problem and can cause huge problems in the church! 
• We work out conflict face to face. Not email, facebook, or even over the phone. We need to do this WITH our brother or sister ONE ON ONE!
• We should NOT wait for the person to come to us. We must be the initiator of reconciliation. Isn't that what Jesus did for us? We must be proactive. Go to them. Go talk to your spouse. Go talk to your co-worker or even your boss. Talk to your parents. Go talk to you pastor. He won't bite. In fact, I respect a person so much MORE when they say to me: "Pastor, I'm struggling with something you said (or did) and I just need to talk to you about it."
• Don't wait until there's a big deal. Keep the the slate clean and the air clear. Even when there may not be a HUGE deal between us and another person, even if we sense something is there, we need to call it out brother to brother; sister to sister:  "John, it could just be TOTALLY me, but I just sense things haven't been right lately and I just want to make sure we're OK." 
• Don't let Sunday get here before we do this. Jesus was also teaching here that our worship of God and our spiritual growth will be limited as long as there is unresolved conflict in our lives. Jesus said, BEFORE we try to worship again, go and deal with this?

Question: Who do you need to talk with, and what do you need to talk about, before your next worship experience?



 

Our Worship Planning Process (pt. 2)...

As I mentioned yesterday, our message and service planning here at Mountain Lake is not flippant, by any means. Much strategic prayer and planning goes into nailing down what God wants us to say and how He wants us to say it to the people. Here are a few more elements that help us in our worship planning process:

5. We work a individuals and as a team in our message preparation process. One of the reasons I love NOT teaching every week at our church, is because on those weeks, I get to spend more time with God, seeking Him about what He wants us to say to His people IN THE FUTURE. Honestly, the future can be as near as two weeks from now, but more often stretches out to months in the future.  Each week, our primary communicator studies alone on Monday & Tuesday. Then, on Wed AM, 2-3 of us get together to listen to where the communicator senses God is leading him. We speak into that and help confirm and strengthen a strong direction and even application of the message.

6. Collective Service Planning and Creativity is a TEAM SPORT. On Monday afternoons, several of us meet to plan and examine the collective worship services. This process is not left to one person either. Tod Nichols, our Worship Pastor, does a masterful job of driving this process, and the team of several pastors who have creative bents join this meeting to bring their spiritual gifts to bear on the process. In this meeting we nail down final songs, creative elements, announcements, and orders of service for the next several weeks of worship. 

7. We plan months into the future. Twice per year, we meet ALL DAY to look 6 months into the future, specifically regarding our worship services and message series content. This past week, our team met to nail down our next six month teaching calendar. I brought a sense of what I felt like God wanted us to say, and allowed our top Ministry Leaders to speak into that, push back on that, bring new ideas to the table, and confirm where I feel God is leading us. We get highly creative at these meetings, which are always held off-site to stimulate that very thing.  We had an awesome meeting this last Monday, and I feel SO GREAT about where God is taking us, what He wants us to say, and HOW we're going to say it! I can't wait to begin to share SOON what He has laid on our hearts!

8. We remain open to the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Often, over the years, we've had a great plan, and then we begin to sense God is up to something different; that something that wasn't in the plan becomes more urgent; or less urgent. We sense God leading us to go a different direction in our teaching. In this event, we never allow the teaching calender to control the Spirit. We always allow the Spirit to control the teaching calendar. Many times over the years, we tweaked the calendar as we've gone along. Other times, we've worked the plan just as we had laid it our months later. IN either event, we listened and cooperated with the Spirit of God!

Largely due to this process, and the leaders who helped shape it, this Fall is going to be one of the most spiritually impactful times in the life of our church! Mountain Lakers, buckle your spiritual seat belts!

Our Worship Planning Process (pt. 1)...

One of the questions I'm often asked, both inside and outside our church is: "Where do you guys get your sermon series ideas?" Today, I'll unpack the answer to that question a bit.

1. What's important to God? What is important to God's heart and mission? These ideas drive our teaching calendar.  Our five marks of a follower of Jesus are already pretty clear from God's Word: Spiritual Growth, Using our Gifts, Visionary Giving, and Greater Impact. God wants every Christian to grow consistently in these areas. These ideas from god;s heart largely drive our teaching calendar each year. We just need to figure out how to communicate them. We never allow creativity to drive what we teach on. We allow God to drive what we teach on.

2. What is God teaching me? I have come to realize that when God is speaking to me, He is not just speaking to me for my benefit. He wants to use what he's teaching me to teach others.

3. Where are the people? Scripture challenges church leaders to KNOW , PAY ATTENTION TO, and CARE for "the flock of God," the church. What are God's people dealing with or struggling with? What's missing in their lives? What's needed in their lives? What do God's people need to know RIGHT NOW? These go near the top of what God has us teach on.

 4. WHEN should this be taught? Once we begin to put together WHAT  God wants us to teach on, we THEN begin to discuss WHEN during the year would be the best time to share this with God's people? Our worship planning process helps us accomplish this. I'll discuss this in more detail tomorrow.

Stay tuned for pt. 2 of this post!

What I learned @Disney World a/b Guest Services (pt. 2)

* We need to make it our business to know the business. I was amazed at my inability to stump any Disney World employee with a question that I had. I am not a typical man, I will ask for directions quickly. I love to ask tough questions to people to see how they respond. I purposely asked several employees random questions about Disney World, attractions, showtimes, etc. and they ALL knew the answers! It was obvious to me that not only did Disney employees know their task, they knew what was going on in ALL of Disney World! Questions: As a church member, do I make it my business to know what;s going on in my church? If someone were to ask me about a ministry area I'm NOT involved in, would I be able to answer their questions? As a Pastor or ministry leader, am I communicating effectively to my area of ministry, not just what's going in my corner of the ministry world, but all of the church?

* Regardless of how we feel, "the show" must go on. It was 90+ degrees most days while we were at Disney. I am sure the employees were miserably hot...some of them in long sleeve uniforms and costumes! I also witnessed all kinds of ugly comments/behavior from tourists to Disney employees. The Disney "Cast Members" never flinched. Never whined. Never ceased to smile. Never got impatient. Never allowed their tough day to be imposed on a guest's day. Never. As guests service volunteers each week, we must remember that our tough day should NEVER rub off on guests. We need to be prepared to make every guests's day their BEST day ever to church, regardless of how we feel. We must be prepared to love and serve well and maintain our "game faces" no matter what. We can't get frazzled because a certain volunteer didn't show up, and let it ruin our day. If we do, we could ruin a guest's day. We need to be prepared to make every guest's day their BEST day ever to church, regardless of how we feel. Or it could be their LAST day. Questions: What kind of spiritual mindset am I in when I approach the church campus each week? Do I have my "game face" on when it comes to being prepared to welcome and interact with guests?

What I learned @Disney World a/b Guest Services (Pt. 1)

Disney World and the church are in the same business: The people business. The church just has a higher goal for people than Disney does. Disney's goal is to deliver fun and entertainment to people. The church's goal is to deliver the message of hope, joy, and eternal life to people. So would you think Guest Services would be more important at church or at Disney? Sadly to say, however, Disney does it better most of the time. We could make some observations from them about how we can deliver our message more effectively to people by HOW we relate to guests on our church campuses each week. Here are a few observations I made about Disney and Guests Services experiences, and their implications for the church.

* Everyone is in Guest Services. They don't have a customer service area or a customer service team at Disney World. EVERYONE is in Guest Services. I mean EVERYONE! As the church, we need to realize every week that guest Services should never be limited to one ministry area. Every follower of Jesus should view themselves as a member of Guest Services! We are all there to serve guests each week! Question: If I really understood this, would this change at all where I park, what time I get there, where I sit, or or how quickly I leave each Sunday?

* The guest is always the most important thing No matter what they were doing, over and over again, Disney World "cast members" (not employees) would stop in their tracks to answer ANY question we had. Always. Never seemed rushed. Never seemed like we were interrupting what they were doing. Never. Every one of them seemed to be convinced that the guest was the most important things at every moment. As guest services volunteers in the church, we need to remember that people ARE our business! Not a program. Not a task. Not a service. People are the church. The church IS people! This means music, programming, curriculum, and meetings are not the most important thing. Loving God is best expressed by loving people! Questions: If I really understood this, how would it affect how I interact with people each week at church? How often do I have a conversation with guests at my church? Or do I only talk to non-guests?

Stay tuned for part 2 of this post...